


The Pitt and the Pendulum

by ReachForTheStars



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 05:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15767433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReachForTheStars/pseuds/ReachForTheStars
Summary: The Lone Wanderer cannot and will not turn his back on the Pitt with Asher dead. Building a community in place of a slave pen will not be easy.





	The Pitt and the Pendulum

The following is one of many documents found scribbled in one of the Lone Wanderer's notebooks. It seems to have been written in several pieces over most of a day, as there are several sudden changes in the heaviness of the ink and neatness of the handwriting. Several items were added in the margins of earlier lists later.

  
Short-term priorities (next 2 days):

  * Confirm that all slavers have been killed or driven out; clean up any remaining land mines within the Uptown and Downtown areas
  * Send teams to secure food and water supplies from dead slaver vendors and palace, or people will starve. Need to find Asher's water purifier and keep it working. Will need to distribute captured weapons and armor to those teams - I killed most of the trogs in Uptown but no doubt still some around. As LAST RESORT consider getting slop station going again, but only if shortages truly dire - maybe better to evac. city than do that
  * Form caravan to take everyone wanting to leave safely out. Need to be escorted beyond the trogs, raiders, and contam. zone to where they can reach farming settlements to west. DO THIS IMMEDIATELY - yes, they'd be valuable here in the immediate crisis, but that's how it started with Asher
  * Make clear to Wernher that he WILL recognize and respect my authority if he's going to act on my behalf. I will NOT be a figurehead.
  * Form provisional city council to ratify all this: Wernher, Nola, and Midea should be good choices. Want to establish democratic gov't, or maybe constitutional monarchy setup would be better, with myself as Pitt Lord=monarch and elected parliament/city council?
  * Organize team to remove all dead bodies - bury, or throw in river



Mid-term priorities (next 2 weeks):

  * Establish new system for workers. They'll need to be paid a lot to stay given risk of trogging before cure. We need to find Asher's caps for this, or city will just empty out. Details of this ASAP. Standard payscale - or maybe just negotiate with each worker independently? Profit-sharing would be better for creating right incentives - talk with Wernher about this
  * Worker safety needs much more emphasis - no one will want to work here if it's too dangerous. Mill needs to be inspected and overhauled. Consider stopping work there completely until that's been done.
  * Caps are no good if we can't get some traders in here for people to buy things. Proper clothes are essential. Too far for Crow to do anything - will have to have Wernher deal with locals
  * Start moving people into uptown housing and "Haven"; no sense keeping them in slums when plenty of available space. Keep it temp for now - auction off property rights later, to fill public treasury?
  * Inspect Asher's documents - need to determine what manuf. goods he promised to sell, to whom, for what. We need to be PREPARED to renegotiate his contracts with current customers, so don't lose valuable business and/or have army beating down our door
  * Can't raid for food anymore even if wanted to. Need to determine what local farming towns to NW need, and start re-tooling accordingly. Negotiate contracts for them to give us food on credit, with manufactured goods in trade later? At least, need to form rapport with local communities so we can secure good relations later
  * Related to above - ad-hoc census. We need to determine exactly who is still alive (and sane) in the city, their skills, and what they need. Should allow us to determine what we can produce for trade - and what we should trade it for.
  * Where do we stand with the cure? Need to SECURE Sandra's notes/data and estimate what else needs to be done for mass production. Ensure Midea's capable of making sure Wernher keeps ethical trade-offs OK. Time horizon on cure affects a lot of things about future planning
  * Could we reduce pollution (oz. prevent=lb. cure)? Look into major sources of rad. material & other contaminants. Problem with insufficient drainage of river? Would changing production methods or even shutting down some mills help? Determine what can be done
  * Air filters for housing? Do we have materials to make and install them?
  * Brief funeral service for everyone killed in the battle - including our enemies (need to "bind up nation's wounds")
  * Formal ELECTIONS for city council - 3 at-large members? Districts not really feasible. Figure out how much I want to try to guide them, but first need to work out constitutional system (what limits on powers? frequency of elections? etc.). Put the latter to referendum at mass meeting. Only way to be sure Wernher or similar won't become new Asher
  * Inventory of assets - what infrastructure do we have & in what condition? Need to know what we can produce and how fast
  * CLEAN UP BRIDGE - land mines, scrap metal, corpses, etc. are all over the bridge and road to the DC route tunnel - I can deal with mines; get a team out there to process everything else



Longer-term priorities (next 2 months):

  * Form organized professional army to defend Pitt from external threats & finish killing incurable trogs
  * Workings of government - need some system to collect taxes (trade tariffs will probably be most politically palatable; to non-economists, appear to be paid by outsiders). Accounting system needed to track use of public caps. Have taxes fund Nola and co. to provide universal health care? Kind of Communist \- but since people outside Vaults seem to use that as generic pejorative & don't know meaning, might not matter. Could maintain current pay-for-service model as long as there's a system in place for old and disabled (previously they were just directly or indirectly killed)?
  * Justice system? Indep. judiciary?
  * INFRASTRUCTURE - need to construct/repurpose old buildings for proper medical facility and research labs. Need more than that for quality of life - library? Restaurants? Defn. take down barriers between up/downtown once safe to do so
  * Establish relations with DC Brotherhood - non-aggro treaty initially, followed by formal alliance? We can use scrap from DC - DC scavs. can trade it for goods manufactured with it
  * Let potential workers know there are jobs available here - how, exactly? Details need to be worked out
  * CURE - what do we need? Supplies, equipment, information, people?



 

I had intended, upon victory here, to ~~go home~~ return to DC. However, it's become clear that's not possible; Wernher and Midea are not up to task of managing affairs here. Will send a team back south with supplies, equipment, and Wadsworth's security code to bring as much useful ~~gear and f~~ stuff as they can from house in Megaton. Send Milly? They should be able to buy brahmin in Arefu or MT for hauling. Maybe a proper doc can treat their skin problems. The Branchtenders might know, but I'm still not sure I want to risk letting  anyone else know.

  
This is an unpleasant place to live. I keep expecting to see Sauron's Great Eye staring at me; the very air we breathe is a ~~toxic~~ poisonous fume. Haven at least has decent air filters. But people have to make trade goods we can exchange for filters - but the more manuf. we do, the worse the air gets. That's just one of myriad problems we'll have in the days, weeks, years, ahead. I knew from reading history that overthrowing King George/Louis/Tsar is easy part; what comes after is what matters.

  
I'm also going to write that team a letter to take to Paradise Falls (so don't get "thrown in the pen w/the meat") to tell Clover to come back w/them. I may have to keep her and Wernher separated when they get here - she probably won't have forgotten "diseased whore" but maybe she'll think that kick she landed on his balls was enough - I have NOT forced her to stay with me, nor to sleep with me. She wants to, and I really doubt my (lack of) skill in sack is why. So, maybe not love the way other people experience it. But if good enough for her, it's good enough for me too.

  
Going to sleep now, been a  very long day.


End file.
